Straddling the gap between the LAN and the WAN, today’s media gateway products act as traffic cop, translator and post office for the broadband connections that serve homes and businesses. Usually sitting on the customer side of a DSL, cable or optical connection, Media Gateways are the boxes that make carrier’s triple-play services possible. Not too long ago, these devices were often thought of as broadband routers but the packet processing, traffic management and other sophisticated services they provide have moved them into a class of their own.
At their simplest, media gateways separate VoIP voice packets from the rest of the Internet traffic and ensure each stream gets to its proper destination with the proper priority. More sophisticated media gateways also handle the signal processing required to bridge analog and digital voice services and even support high-quality IP-based video services. These capabilities are also becoming increasingly popular in multi-service business gateways (MSBGs) which consolidate PBX, internet access devices, firewalls, and routers, and, in some cases, even networked storage systems on a single, integrated platform.
In this month’s Product Showcase, we’ll take a tour of the chips and software being used to construct these versatile and essential elements of the broadband ecosystem.
Media Gateway Hardware SuppliersBroadcom Since Broadcom is one of the biggest producers of networking silicon, we were disappointed that they did not take the time to respond to our inquiries, forcing us to hunt among their vast array of products for items related to media gateways. Our search revealed several integrated consumer-grade CPE solutions as well as the building blocks for building larger SMB and enterprise-class gateway equipment.
BCM6368 VDSL/ADSL2 Gateway:
The
BCM6368 combines a VDSL2/ADSL2 transceiver and AFE with a high-performance multicore MIPS32 CPU, ATM/PTM hardware SAR, hardware packet-processing accelerator, Gigabit Ethernet switch core with four 10/100 Ethernet PHYs and dual GMII interfaces, dual USB host/device, multichannel TDM/PCM bus, parallel expansion bus supporting CardBus, and mini-PCI into a single high-performance monolithic device. It delivers 100 Mbit/s downstream and 50 Mbit/s upstream, enhanced QoS for IPTV video, dual-latency framing, ATM or PTM physical layer, DSL channel bonding, and embedded operations channels for remote management of the CPE.
Cable Set-Top Box Solutions:
Broadcom's silicon can also power high-end interactive
set-top boxes that merge high-speed Internet access functionality with studio quality graphics, text and video, supporting a range of home communication and entertainment capabilities.
Voice over IP Processors:
Broadcom has integrated Gigabit Ethernet switching onto a single-chip
VoIP device, enabling end-to-end Gigabit throughputs within the Enterprise Network. When used in conjunction with by their PhonexChange software suite, these devices provide a solution with advanced QoS features that enable high-performance IP phones with superior voice quality.
Cavium is best known for its OCTEON MIPS64 based processors such as the
CN31XX series (reviewed
here July 2007) that offer combined network processing, traffic management and security functionality. Their combination of high-performance RSIC processors and specialized packet and security proceeding cores makes them a power- and cost-effective building block for routers, triple-play gateways, and other multimedia equipment.
Recent acquisitions have also put them squarely into the media processing market with their PureVu CNW36XX super low latency full-HD H.264 video processors These devices are specifically optimized for interactive HD video applications including wireless and power-line HDMI cable replacement adapters for game consoles, PC laptops, Blu-Ray players, HD set-top boxes and HD DVRs.
Cavium CNW36XX Media Processors
Cavium’s PureVu CNW36XX processors include 2 bi-directional video ports with support for spatial and temporal multiplexed video streams and can encode or decode a single 1080P60 stream or two 1080P30/I60, 720P60/30 or SD streams. Its stream duplication capabilities allow up to four 720P30 and up to 8 SD streams to be supported. Its Super Low Latency Technology enable the PureVu CNW36XX processors to consistently deliver sub-1 ms latencies for 1080P60 encode-decode operations and sub frame encode-decode latencies for multi-stream processing tasks. These latency levels are key requirements for wireless or power-line HDMI cable replacement applications where raw video bit rates continue to outpace available bandwidth. PureVu CNW36XX processors also support transsizing, transrating and stream duplication, as well as advanced error resiliency and concealment features that guarantee distortion-free and the highest fidelity pictures under the most adverse channel conditions.
More information on the
OCTEON series of MIPS64-based processors
More information on
PureVu media processors
Freescale SemiconductorFreescale has used its deep expertise in telecommunications and networking to offer several media gateway solutions and reference designs. Most of them feature their PowerQUICC series of communication processors which combine a versatile PowerPC processor core with specialized I/O and dedicated communication processing cores. Besides its solid silicon, Freescale has a talent for partnering with some of the most innovative third-party software providers in the industry – a talent that makes their media gateway platforms a great place to launch your next multimedia product from. Here’s a sampling of what Freescale has to offer.
MPC8349E-mITX Media Server-in-a-Box
Freescale’s
MPC8349E-mITX Media Server-in-a-Box platform solution is designed to help original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and original design manufacturers (ODMs) accelerate the development process and speed time-to-market for next-generation home media servers. It is a turnkey hardware/software reference platform for home media servers with advanced NAS capabilities. This reference platform is based on the MPC8349E PowerQUICC II Pro processor, containing a core built on Power Architecture technology and standards-compliant software from Mediabolic that enables consumers to share and store multimedia files, such as video, DVD backups, music and photos, throughout the digital home. Mediabolic software makes it easy to centrally manage and distribute digital content among multiple PCs and networked entertainment devices.
MPC8349E-mITX Office-in-a-Box Reference Platform
A collaboration between Freescale Semiconductor and Jungo, the
MPC8349E-mITX Office-in-a-Box reference platform is designed to provide Internet access, security, networked storage, and IP telephony services in a single, cost-effective package. It blends Jungo's field-proven OpenSMB software with Freescale's MPC8349E mITX reference board. The versatile board features the MPC8349E PowerQUICC II Pro processor containing a core built on Power Architecture technology and Vitesse's SparX Gigabit Ethernet switch technology.
Based on the MPC8349E PowerQUICC II Pro integrated communications processor, this reference platform enables network equipment vendors to develop products that support a rich suite of information technology services and capabilities, such as voice over Internet protocol (VoIP), IP-PBX, Gigabit Ethernet LAN switch, stateful packet inspection (SPI) firewall, virtual private network (VPN) router, application-aware quality of service (QoS), print server and network-attached storage (NAS).
Ikanos Fusiv Vx170 FTTH Gateway Processor for Customer Premises Equipment
Ikanos made its early fortunes with
DSL chip sets, so developing a CPE gateway processor like their Fusiv Vx170 seems like a natural extension of their original mission. Designed expressly for fiber-to-the-home deployments the Vx170 integrates a control processor, DSP subsystem, security engine, and two GMII Gigabit Ethernet ports for exceptional broadband connectivity.
Its MIPS-based core and hardware-assisted Quality of Service (QoS) capabilities make it a great choice for deployments of new services such as IPTV, video on demand and online gaming. As noted in our April 2007
review, the
“Fusiv processor makes a clean break from traditional multi-core and multi-thread approaches with a very powerful hybrid architecture that offers a tremendous amount of processing power for the amount of power and silicon it consumes. The Fusiv processor consists of a MIPS 24 k RISC CPU that's tightly-coupled to a series of specialized cores to handle specific tasks.” This unique distributed architecture includes accelerator processor (AP) engines for data path functions, ensuring that the maximum host CPU processing power is available for customer applications. Applications include FTTH VoIP Gateways, Wireless Routers, Security Gateways and Quadruple Play Gateways.
A data sheet and additional information on the IKF6860 Vx170 FTTH Gateway processor is available at the
Vx170 home page on the Ikanos web site.
LSI is bullish on the multi-service business gateway market, and has done a good job of focusing its own products and the ones it acquired when it bought Agere to address this market. Their
network processors,
RegEx/content processors, and
multi-core DSP/RISC processors provide the building blocks for equipment that consolidates PBX, internet access device, firewall, and router functionality on a single, integrated, cost-effective platform. Since space limitations do not permit an exhaustive account of all its products here, LSI has decided to focus its entry on the StarPro SP2600 media processor series (reviewed
here April 2008 in the
dspZONE).
LSI SP2603 Multi-Core Media Processor
The StarPro2603 is a multi-core DSP and RISC platform targeting a wide range of enterprise and infrastructure applications requiring high-density DSP functions in a multichannel format. Featuring three StarCore SC3400 DSP cores and an ARM11 processor, the heterogeneous computing platform is optimized for power and density, enabling very high channel counts for both voice and video applications.
The packet processing subsystem, based on the ARM11 core, performs the processing and routing of IP packets, providing many system control plane options. Complementing the large shared system memory, full support for external memory is provided via a DDR2 memory controller. The DSP subsystems, ARM subsystem, system memory, and I/O are connected via a high-performance bus matrix based on a multilayer ARM AXI host bus. This bus matrix is effectively a crossbar switch, providing more than 60 Gbyte/s of aggregate throughput.
Typical channel capacities for the SP2603:
- G.711 to TDM: 256 channels
- G.729a/b to TDM: 125 channels
- AMR to TDM: 112 channels
SP2603’s features LSI SP2612 Multicore Media Processor
Should you require a higher level of processing power or channel density, the StarPro2612 can deliver it. Composed of four discrete SP2603 die in a compact and economical BGA package, the solution features twelve StarCore SC3400 DSP cores and four ARM 11 processors.
Typical channel capacities for the SP2612:
- G.711 to TDM: 1024 channels
- G.729a/b to TDM: 500 channels
- AMR to TDM: 448 channels
SP2612’s features Both processors are complemented by a comprehensive software library, including wireless and wireline voice codecs, video codecs, echo cancellers, IP packet processing, and a flexible DSP framework. A state-of-the-art Eclipse-based IDE and full-featured C/C complier, assembler, and linker/loader are available directly from LSI, with full support for multiple multicore debugger environments.
More information on
LSI networking products MarvellSince Marvell has consistently ignored our repeated requests to include EN-Genius on any of their product announcements for several years (they don’t even return our e-mails), it is not surprising that they failed to respond to our inquiry for this article. Nevertheless we took some time to search their web site for relevant products that would be of interest to our readers. The most directly applicable product we were able to find is their Horizon series of communication controllers which integrate all necessary interfaces for LAN/WAN bridging as well as all of the common functions found in multi-service access routers, into a single chip.
Marvell GT-96122 and GT-96132 Communications Controllers
Marvell’s
Horizon GT-96122 and GT-96132 communications controllers provide new packet processing capabilities for systems that require the convergence of voice, video and data at the edge of the network. The integrated NetGX Co-processor handles compute-intensive tasks such as flow-classification based on Layer 3-5 packet information, encryption and authentication for security purposes and virtually any other packet processing functions typically handled by the host CPU. Applications for the Horizon series include LAN-to-WAN routers , VoIP gateways, and network security equipment.
Mindspeed’s Comcerto series of dual-core communication processors covers the full range of media gateway applications from consumer CPE to SMB/enterprise equipment. Both the Comcerto 100 and its bigger brother the Comcerto 1000 use a pair of ARM-11 RISC cores to separately execute their media stream processing tasks and control plane duties. By separating the two functions, Mindspeed has made their devices easier to program and ensured that your packets are handled in a timely and efficient manner with a minimum of latency variation. When paired with a rich complement of mission-appropriate I/O and their straightforward OpenMind development environment, it’s no wonder that these packet engines are extremely popular in many high-volume consumer and business gateway products.
Applications for the Comcerto 100/1000Include:
- VoIP home appliances
- SMB VPN Routers (security appliances)
- Broadband home routers
- Enterprise access point
- Media gateways
Mindspeed Comcerto 100 Communication Processors
Mindspeed’s
Comcerto 100 series of devices for residential, small office/home office (SOHO) and small-to-midsize businesses (SMB) and enterprise networks combine a high-performance VPN/WAN router platform with a guaranteed low-latency voice subsystem. The 100 series speed the delivery of broadband residential gateway and office-in-a-box customer premise products while reducing total system cost.
Comcerto 1000
To better address a wide variety of applications ranging from high-end VoIP enabled home gateways, small-to-midsized business (SMB) high performance security appliances to Ethernet powered 802.11n enterprise access points, Mindspeed is launching its next generation high-performance embedded low-power processor family.
The
Comcerto 1000 series of processors delivers scalability, superior packet handling capabilities, vastly increased VPN and SSL throughput and industry leading quality of service hardware features.
Comcerto 1000 leverages ARM's energy efficient core technology and Mindspeed's low-power design process to achieve the lowest power consumption in its class (<2 W typical @ 650 MHz). Additionally, the companion board support package software provides a rich set of power management features to address the energy saving goals of service providers and product manufacturers worldwide.
Comcerto 1000 I/O interfaces in conjunction with Mindspeed's innovative multi-layer bus architecture allowing non-blocking concurrent transactions across all data interfaces, thus minimizing on-chip packet processing latency. Moreover, the SoC data interfaces deliver a system BOM cost reduction by simplifying and thus minimizing PCB design requirements.
OpenMind Development Environment
Mindspeed's
OpenMind developer ecosystem provides users of Mindspeed's Comcerto family of VoIP, data and Mixed Media processors:
- Expertise in developing Comcerto based VoIP & Mixed Media systems
- Comcerto proven software applications
- Off the shelf and customized HW, SW and system solutions
Octasic founded its business on a series of extremely cost-effective echo cancellers and has branched out into audio/voice processing with its
Vocallo family of media gateway processors (reviewed
here and winner of a 2008 Product of the Year award). The Vocallo MGW is the industry’s first DSP based on an asynchronous (clock-less) architecture that delivers an exceptional performance-to-power ratio that, when complemented with its near-turnkey applications software, makes it a great choice for a complete media gateway solution. Its asynchronous logic and efficient architecture give it a level of performance that allows the DSP core to support a completely soft implementation of simultaneous voice and video applications without the need for additional hardware acceleration. As a result, media gateway providers and enterprise communication equipment manufacturers can now offer a complete solution, based on a single platform, at an affordable cost.
Octasic OCT6100 Multimedia DSPs
Powered by Octasic's certified carrier-grade algorithms, the
OCT6100 series performs high quality echo cancellation and Voice Quality Enhancement (VQE) functions.
Designed for a broad range of applications, the OCT6100 supports densities from 16 to 672 channels on a single chip and offers extensive features such as acoustic echo cancellation, signaling tone detection, audio conferencing, background music solutions and more. Independently, or combined with other Octasic voice solutions, the OCT6100 series can significantly increase density in voice gateways while offloading DSPs to maximize their use for other value-added features. Requiring minimum integration, it greatly simplifies design and accelerates time-to-market.
Product data sheets for
Vocallo MGW and
OCT6100 Raza MicroelectronicsRMI XLS Processors
Raza’s innovative multi-core, multi-threaded implementation of the MIPS RISC architecture has allowed its processors to enjoy great popularity in both embedded and communications applications. While their higher-end
XLR and
XLP series are well-suited for enterprise- and carrier-class equipment, their value-priced
XLS series makes a very appropriate foundation for either residential or SMB media gateways. When the XLS family was reviewed
here back in February 2007, we noted
“both the single- and dual-core XLS machines use a combination of hardware accelerator cores and a clever ring-like interconnect bus to make the most of every clock cycle. Its point-to-point meshed connections run at full processor speed, and can support up to 10 simultaneous operations. The XLS innards are further streamlined using a packet distribution engine that controls all packet movement between CPUs, I/O and any of the accelerator cores.”
The XLS family is available in variants of cores, and your choice of network connections and host interfaces. Reference designs are also available for both
network-attached storage applications and
SMB wireless gateways.
Raza Microelectronics
XLS processor product home page Given how heavily Texas Instruments plays in the multimedia market, we were very surprised when they did not respond to our invitation to offer up a few selections for this Product Showcase. Rather than simply leave them out, we spent a bit of time cruising their web site to find at least one product that represented the networking and multimedia capabilities available from TI. Naturally, TI has lots of powerful general-purpose DSPs that can be used to build large-scale voice and video gateways but their DaVinci multi-core multimedia processors seemed a bit closer to the themes of this story.
TMS320DM6467 DaVinci Digital Media Center-on-a-Chip
Composed of a TMS320C64x DSP core and a ARM 9-based RISC processor, the DaVinci family is also equipped with a pair of programmable high-definition video image co-processors that support encode, decode, and transcode operations for most digital video formats. DaVinci also sports a video data conversion engine that performs horizontal and vertical downscaling and chrominance conversion in hardware.
Among other applications, the DaVinci processor can be used in a digital set-top-box (STB) solution that converts signals into content which can then be displayed on a television screen. This solution can be also used to create standalone streaming media products or digital video (DVR) systems, or as a sub-system to add streaming media capability to various consumer products. With the addition of a hard-disk drive (HDD), this platform can be made to support DVR or personal video recorder (PVR) functionality as well. Added system savings can be achieved by compressing content before storing.
More information on the
TMS320DM6467 digital media center-on-a-chip.
More information about using the DaVinci in
STB/DVR and streaming media applications.
Vitesse VSC7501 Multimedia Router
Although it’s advertised as a router-on-a chip, Vitesse’s The VSC7501, (nicknamed G-RocX), also includes all of the critical subsystems essential to building GbE media gateway products that can support triple play and other high-speed broadband services. The highly-integrated 4 2-port GbE router includes four triple-speed copper PHY ports, line-side termination resistors, PLLs, a custom hardware-based network address translation (HNAT) engine, and an ARM9 CPU which can be used as both for housekeeping functions and as an application processor. It also includes a pair of voltage regulators, a UART, two USB 2.0 interfaces, and a PCI port.
Vitesse supplies application software and reference designs are available for the VSC750several applications including:
- A GE-PON ONU router
- An integrated broadband CPE (ADSL2 /VDSL/FTTH) router
- A VPN/firewall-based SMB/SME router
- A wired/wireless-N Gigabit SOHO/SMB router
More information on the
VSC7501 Multimedia Router
